An experiment

Easily distracted as ever I pulled off the road to the market town to photograph gulls following a plough. As I'd driven past the field there was a swirling mass of birds in the air. By the time I had parked up and walked back the tractor driver had gone for his mid-morning break. Nonetheless I had a wander round and headed down a lane I've been meaning to wander down for some time. I might wander down there again on a less overcast day. On the way back to the car I added to my files of street furniture and road marking photographs.

My original intention was to experiment with using a fisheye lens for 'street' photography. In the confines of the market stalls I thought it might have a use. The results clearly demonstrate that there is scope for this approach. As so often with this sort of subject black and white can work better than colour as I think the small gallery demonstrates. Even so a couple of the frames worked okay in colour as they have colours which harmonise across the frame - one predominantly red, the other shades of green and yellow.

They are not fantastic pictures by any means, but as examples of the exercise in question I think they show how the 'distorted' lens could be made to work for people pictures. The bending of architectural features is more distracting than the warping of human features to  my mind.

The fisheye wasn't the only lens in my bag. I also had my latest toy which I rightly assumed would be just that bit too long in focal length for capturing an overall scene (which is what I try to do mostly), but an occasional portrait never hurts. The one below has been cropped slightly from the left and top - partly to offset the subject, partly to remove clutter.

Does this cropping make it any less truthful? I was reading again how there was a trend for documentary photographers to print their entire frames including a black border to prove that they hadn't cropped their prints, and so demonstrate that their pictures were 'true'. But what of the view outside of the camera's frame? Every single photograph is a crop of the view before the camera. Perhaps only an uncropped fisheye picture giving a 180° view is a true representation of what the photographer was presented with!

I suppose for roaming the streets a zoom lens might make more sense. I like the flexibility. The problem, for me, is that to get the same look as fixed focal length lenses can give (the look I see when I look at my old black and white prints) that zoom has to be a great hulking thing. If it has a hood fitted it is even larger. This might not make people around me uneasy, but it makes me feel like a camera enthusiast. The sort that uses a camera rucksack to carry a mountain of gear that never gets used, but has to be taken along just in case.

If it hadn't started trying to snow I might have grabbed a cup of tea and stuck it out longer and tried some other ideas out in the afternoon. I think I made the right choice to come home and review what I'd got in comfort rather than ploughing blindly ahead. I've certainly realised that a different way of composing is required with the fisheye. With more consideration for the entire picture, and any verticals in shot. There's a bit of sun forecast for tomorrow. That might tempt me out again.

---